This book offers a new analysis of the Holocaust as a multiple
trap, its origins, and its final stages, in which rescue seemed to
be possible. With the Holocaust developing like a sort of a
doomsday machine set in motion from all sides, the Jews found
themselves between the hammer and various anvils, each of which
worked according to the logic created by the Nazis that dictated
the behavior of other parties and the relations between them before
and during the Holocaust. The interplay between the various parties
contributed to the victims' doom first by preventing help and later
preventing rescue. These help and rescue efforts proved mainly self
defeating, and various legacies about them emerged during the
Holocaust and are heatedly debated even today. Their real nature is
uncovered here on the basis of newly opened archives worldwide.